I saw a comment that one site got 25% of its traffic from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc (I think it was Techcrunch but couldn't swear to it). So they do make quite a big difference in some cases.
If it's done carefully via a one or two click model, perhaps via separate page so that visitors/subscribers who hate this sort of thing are not tracked, it would let those who do use social media share LWN links more easily.
Posted Jul 5, 2012 16:01 UTC (Thu) by fatrat (subscriber, #1518)
[Link]
But the whole "only see it for free after a week" model breaks the +1/Like.
If I like this article today, my friends can't read it.
I'm not a fan.
But please, yes to a mobile site. I often read content on my phone or a table, and the current design doesn't work well there.
Updates and an announcement from LWN
Posted Jul 6, 2012 9:51 UTC (Fri) by bosyber (subscriber, #84963)
[Link]
Given there's the "Send a free link" for articles that are not yet freely visible, I don't think that's really true. Using that link in a tweet works pretty well.
Updates and an announcement from LWN
Posted Jul 5, 2012 16:15 UTC (Thu) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752)
[Link]
I saw a comment that one site got 25% of its traffic from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, etc (I think it was Techcrunch but couldn't swear to it). So they do make quite a big difference in some cases.
Um, that does not imply that people wouldn't spread links around w/o the "social" buttons. It might make it easier for some, but clearly the 25% would be more like an upper bound.